


I guess this is goodbye then

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotions, Failed Marriage, Goodbyes, Love Confessions, M/M, Murder, Sadness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 19:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18168998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom was leaving so it was time to say all the things that were unsaid between them.





	I guess this is goodbye then

**Author's Note:**

> I found this on my laptop and finished it, but I couldn't really remember where it was supposed to be going so it's a bit convoluted and meandering, sorry.

Abraxas was mildly suspicious, Tom had asked to come around, which was unusual in itself. Ever since they’d left school, he’d been ever so cold, ever so distant, living in a bubble he did not want to share with anyone. Then, all of a sudden, he wanted to come here, had wanted to see Abraxas specifically, wanted to eat dinner with him and his wife, and then talk alone like proper adults. Abraxas was trying to be suspicious, but if he was honest, he didn’t care what nasty schemes Tom was concocting. Tom could do anything, and Abraxas would never take issue as long as he got to see him. He didn’t care what monsters Tom brought to life, or what lies he told, as long as he could hear them from Tom’s mouth, as long as they could sit either side of a table and Abraxas could see that Tom was here. He knew it was pathetic after so long to still have a crush on his best friend, but how could he help it? He’d seen everything Tom could do, he’d experienced the magic that ran through Tom’s veins, he knew Tom was special, and he loved him for it and he’d love him until the end of the world if only Tom would let him. 

The sun was setting, and a pink haze stained the sitting room as if with frosting. Tom sat opposite Abraxas, his eyes still dark and his fingers still marked with death. He was even more gorgeous than he had been when they were younger if that were possible. Maturity suited Tom, it reminded everyone he couldn’t be toyed with anymore, said that he was in control of his own destiny and that he knew exactly where he was going. Even sitting here, it was obvious that every part of Tom was deliberate, carved from metal and glass and the earth itself. Organic and raw and beautiful. But currently on edge. Tom wasn’t looking at him, and Abraxas could see his nails scratching his wrist, like he had always done, when he was young and scared. Abraxas hoped Tom wasn’t doing it again, peeling himself back, scratching holes in his arms and ripping himself apart just to find answers to questions he’d never ask aloud. He hoped Tom wasn’t doing that again because now there was no one to tell him to stop, there was no one to touch his shoulder and hold his eyes, no one to lie with him and wait until dawn. Tom had no one, and he’d always said he liked it that way, but everyone needed someone, that was what Abraxas’ mother had used to say. 

Sitting there watching him, Abraxas was reminded how Tom was the one thing, he had always wanted and never been able to have, not for lack of trying though. Tom had just never wanted any of that; he’d never played around with the rest of them, never kissed tainted angels after dark, never fumbled or stumbled or cried over someone else’s perfect heart. None of them were good enough for him, they were just fallen seraphim dipped in gold, and Tom had never cared for gold. The things he held in such esteem did not necessarily have such monetary value, they had something else: a profound sense of presence, a memory there was no left alive who remembered, a feeling that had always made Abraxas uneasy. Tom liked things wrapped in a nostalgic sentimentality for a time that never happened. He liked what was fresh and raw and dragged out of the earth when the sun had set. Tom looked for people with black hearts, charred by their sins; he looked for those who had been abandoned by the world, those whose souls God had left behind. But for all these things that Tom proclaimed to like, Abraxas had never seen him like anyone. Tom was too cold, callous politeness that always left people feeling hollow, at least he was to most people. Abraxas had always found him warm, but he supposed that was because he was the only one who had seen how Tom smiled when he was truly happy, as he always had been in their summers together. 

Tom wasn’t smiling now, he was just watching his hands as they scratched. He looked tired, washed out, sick. Though there was such fragility in his frailty, an elegance to the bones in his wrists and mystery to the endless darkness beneath his eyes. He had seen too many midnights, spent too long staring at the stars when the world was asleep, that he no longer knew the glories of the day. He was splitting himself open, giving himself to something neither of them really understood. Abraxas had always known Tom was too brilliant to be lucid forever. He had howling monsters in his heart and demons in his head and a disease that was growing in his bones. Soon there’d be nothing left of the person Abraxas had fallen in love with, but that wouldn’t stop him from following Tom until he was nothing but powdered magic floating through the air. No matter what he did, to others and to himself, Tom was his monster and he didn’t care what other people thought just as long as he had a memory of Tom at his best. Then nothing could take Tom away from him, not even Tom himself. 

Tom looked up at him suddenly, his face glowing with the pink of the sherbet sun. For a split second, he looked young again. Looked like he did when he was eleven and monsters did not take habit in his head. It was gone soon enough, innocence lost. Not that Abraxas had fallen in love with Tom’s innocence. That was boring, predictable, unoriginal, but his knowledge, that indeterminable obsession with making the darkest parts of the world so bright, that was what he had fallen in love with. The simple, unending ingenuity, pure unadulterated intelligence and a smile that could get him anything he liked. Before Tom, he’d never seen anyone smile like that, smile with the sole intention of getting what he wanted. So, the first time he'd seen it, he’d fallen in love. Fallen in love with a new type of power to dip his fingers into and smear across his skin. Abraxas had always believed that money would get him whatever he wanted, but now he understood the capabilities of flattery, the importance of persistence, and the true meaning of a smile. Tom wasn’t smiling now. 

“Why are you here, Tom?” he asked quietly, not wanting to break what they had, but knowing he couldn’t keep Tom here forever. He couldn’t cage him or smother him, no matter how much he wanted to. Tom could not be confined, not anymore, he’d paid his dues, let other people use him for nearly twenty years, and now he wasn’t going to let them anymore. Tom looked up at him, eyes so wide and the darkness spilling from them, he looked scared, liked he had done when he was so young, and he didn’t understand what was inside of him. When he had been afraid of what he was and what he could do. It hadn’t lasted for very long, but Abraxas would never forget what it looked like.   
“Why are you here, Tom?” Abraxas asked again. Tom still didn’t answer, choosing instead to keep scratching at his wrists, scraping off layers of skin and then the layers that were underneath, and then the layers beneath those, as though he was trying to burrow right down to the bone. 

Abraxas got up then and Tom followed him with his eyes, followed how he came close and kneeled in front of him. He touched Tom’s wrist and Tom stopped digging into his own body. Tom’s hands were cold in his, but then again, they were always cold these days. Ever since he’d started to rip parts of himself out, Tom was less and less like he used to be. Every time he saw him, Abraxas knew he saw less of Tom, less of the boy he’d grown up with, less of the man he’d fallen in love with. What he was seeing now he supposed was what Tom was, what he had become because of his dreams.  
“There’s red under your nails,” Abraxas murmured as he turned Tom’s hands over, his own fingers tracing Tom’s palms. Although he said red, they both knew what it was. Blood. Abraxas would never forget the first time Tom had come to him with bloodied hands, the first time he’d touched his neck and left a red handprint that he could still feel. The first and only time Tom had kissed him with his cold mouth, was when his fingers were covered in blood and there was a fizzing under his skin. 

“I have to leave,” said Tom quietly, his eyes avoiding Abraxas’. It was something they’d all been expecting when Tom no longer felt safe with so much virtue hanging in the air. They’d all be waiting for the time, Tom himself deemed his thoughts too dark to remain, and apparently, that time had come. Abraxas wouldn’t say he didn’t know what Tom’s thoughts and even actions often amounted to because then he’d be lying. Abraxas knew he’d always known. He knew that murder set a spark alight in Tom’s blood, that killing made him feel so good. Abraxas himself had never had a taste for it, he didn’t like the way it stained his hands and left exploitable secrets on his clothes. But he liked what it did to Tom. Watching him now in the sunset, when the streams of light had dipped low enough to smear the world with red, he looked gorgeous. Eyes almost glowing, so dark that they were glazed with burgundy, but they were still frightened, still afraid of himself, which could only mean that today’s fatality had been someone of, particular, importance. 

“You finally did it then,” Abraxas said, still holding Tom’s hands and watching him. Tom nodded. Abraxas swallowed, Tom had always said he would, and now he had, he’d finally killed his father. It was a thought that was so alien to him, the idea that someone could so loathe their own flesh and blood, but Tom did. Tom loathed everything about his family. Abraxas tried to slow his breathing, to not show that this affected him. Instead, he rolled up Tom’s sleeves, knowing what he’d find would be distracting and definitely wouldn’t be pretty, it never was. As he rolled back his shirt, Tom winced, he didn’t usually do that. Abraxas swallowed but continued, beneath the fabric, there were long strips of raw flesh, threads of cotton were practically stitched into the edges, and the centres looked painfully sore. Abraxas would never know why Tom did it, only that he’d never known what to do with the monsters inside him. “I can tell by the holes in your arms,” he murmured.  
“And I can tell you’re unhappy by the holes in your marriage, but I don’t mention them, do I?” Tom said though he was still looking at the scratches. Abraxas smiled. It was nice to know that Tom paid enough attention to him to know his marriage was rapidly deteriorating. 

“Did it feel good to kill him?” Abraxas asked, he always asked, it gave them a reason to sit together a little longer. It gave him an excuse to look at Tom’s face, watch his mouth as it formed such pretty words to describe things that weren’t pretty at all. Tom’s eyes finally raised to meet his, and he nodded. “Does it hurt to know your marriage has failed?”  
The question caught him off guard a little, in the few times they’d seen each other since school, Tom had never asked him about _his_ life. “Sometimes.”  
“I’m sorry to hear that.”  
“Thank you, though we both know you’re not. You don’t like my wife, you never have.” It was the truth whether Tom wanted to hear it or not. He’d always made it expressly clear that he couldn’t stand the woman Abraxas’ parents had chosen, and he’s accepted without argument, it was easier like that. Tom had always called her annoying and distracting, a constant grating on his nerves, he had blamed her for not seeing Abraxas much, but Abraxas suspected it was other things that kept him away, things that Tom would never tell him even if he asked. 

Not letting go of Tom’s wrist, he started to get up off his knees before Tom stopped him. Instead, Tom was the on to move, slide down onto the floor beside him. The two of them swathed in the shadows as the sun crept higher on the wall. It felt like they were at school again, hiding in dark corridors waiting for the school to be silent and they could go to places no one else knew about.   
“Do you want to tell me about it?” said Abraxas cutting through the silence. He’d known Tom long enough to understand what he was like when he killed someone, that rush, that need to share something of what it felt like to strip people’s lives away. Tom had always told him, as far back as could remember. He’d told him so much that every one of Tom’s victims felt like his own in some roundabout way, he felt as though he was the one to wave his wand and make them twist and break like dolls. Though Tom sometimes drifted away from magic in those moments, he said it was so easy to kill people like that. He said the true challenge was doing it with his hands, holding them so close and watching the life fade from their eyes. Abraxas suspected that Tom enjoyed playing god. 

“Only if you tell me when you knew your marriage was broken,” said Tom, watching him with an intensity Abraxas had forgotten that mere mortals were capable of. “If you want, you first though,” said Abraxas, ignoring the strangeness of the question for the sake of hearing Tom continuing to talk.   
Tom licked his lip and chewed on it, wondering how to put something so savage into words that sounded refined. “I didn’t use magic, I didn’t want to. It felt so good, they were just sitting there in the drawing room. They barely fought back at all, well he did. He said he didn’t know who I was.”  
“Did he know?” Abraxas asked.  
Tom shrugged, “I didn’t check, it didn’t really matter though, he bled just like everyone else.” Tom leaned in closer then, his hand against Abraxas’ neck. Burning that same spot, he had done years ago. “It felt like I was cutting into me, opening _me_ up, it felt unlike anything else in the world. Nice under my fingers, all warm and red and… you know?” Abraxas watched him, watched how he recounted words, fleeting ideas that didn’t seem coherent anymore. He could Tom talk for hours whether he made sense or not. Tom sighed and gripped Abraxas’ neck a little tighter, “it just felt so – good. What about you?”  
Abraxas would never understand how Tom seemed to have no divisions in his thoughts, murder and love, marriage and death could all be discussed in a single breath with him. He still swallowed though, neither he nor his wife acknowledged that perhaps their marriage was breaking, at least not to each other, what good would it do? Not when everyone already knew. Tom wasn’t helping, he was just watching him expectedly, his hand still not moving from his neck.   
“So?”  
“A year ago. We were eating dinner and there was nothing to say to each other,” Abraxas said looking down at the floor. 

That was always he had to say. Their marriage was not a dramatic one, there were no blazing rows, no violence, no screamed hatred for the papers to lap up. They were simply two people who lived together, two people who looked across the table with nothing to say, to people who only stayed married because it was the done thing.   
“Why do you even care, Tom?” Abraxas said looking up, realising that he hadn’t said anything in a while.   
“I just wanted to know if it was my fault,” he said quietly, his fingers loosening their grip on his neck, before dropping back to his wrist again, nails digging into the skin. Abraxas swallowed, feeling his throat tightening, “why would it be your fault?” he said, though he knew it was. Even his wife knew it was, Tom was a shadow that had been hovering over them ever since their wedding day. A pervading rot was what she called him, something that you couldn’t get out of the walls no matter how hard you tried. Abraxas would have liked to think it wasn’t the only reason they didn’t love each other, but that didn’t stop it being a significant factor.   
Meanwhile, Tom had dropped his eyes to the wooden floorboards, stained black in the dark. “I thought you were in love with me,” he said quietly.   
“Would that be a problem?”  
“No.”

They looked at each other in the fading light, Tom all dark and dangerous, and Abraxas pale and chancy. Tom let go of his own wrist and reached back up, but this time he didn’t touch Abraxas’ neck, but his cheek, “I’m sorry.”  
“Not as much as I am,” Abraxas replied, pressing his own hand into Tom’s and just feeling the coolness of his hands on his skin. “I didn’t mean to, it just happened.”  
Tom smiled, just faintly, “I know. I – avoided you for it. I thought if I didn’t see you, then…”  
“…Then I’d stop loving you,” finished Abraxas, but Tom was shaking his head.  
“No,” he swallowed, “I thought you’d stop meaning something to _me_ , if I didn’t look at you. I thought if you were married, then you’d be happier.”  
Abraxas stared at Tom for a moment, his heart beating too loudly to concentrate, stared at how he looked away, how he tried to pull his fingers from Abraxas’ face. Abraxas held them still. Then he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Tom’s. Perhaps it was rash, perhaps it was stupid, but Tom was leaving, and he wanted to remember what his mouth tasted like. 

Abraxas half expected Tom to pull away, to apparate across the country then and there. But he didn’t, if anything he leaned in and kissed him back, tasting him until it was Abraxas who pulled away. He had to, otherwise, he’d never stop kissing him.   
“Why did you come here, Tom?” he said, not really wanting to know the answer, but needing to hear it.   
“To ask you to come with me,” said Tom, his voice cracking just enough for them both to know. Abraxas shut his and clenched his jaw, willing himself not to cry.  
“You know I can’t,” he said, still not opening his eyes.   
“You could.”  
“I can’t, Tom, you know that.” Tom did know, they both knew, Tom just didn’t want to admit it. Tom nodded and slid his hand from Abraxas’ face, Abraxas let him. He continued to nod to himself as he stood up, his face once again swallowed by the red of the sun.   
Abraxas stood up too, though he stayed in the shadows caused by the walls. “I’ll still be here if you ever want to come back,” he said quietly. Tom just looked at him, “I’m not coming back,” he said softly, his hand gently brushing against Abraxas’ only for a second.  
“I know, but if you ever want to, I’ll be here,” said Abraxas.  
“I guess this is goodbye, then,” said Tom stepping back and drawing his wand.  
“I guess it is, Tom.”

 

Tom never did come back. The person who did just wasn’t the same.


End file.
